Is there any way to preview changes to a template before publishing them?

For the actual content of a page this is an easy process that allows you to check out the document, make changes to the content, preview it, check the document back in, get it approved, and then publish it.

For templates, however, when you make a change it is immediately reflected on the live site. I have not found a good way to develop changes to existing templates easily. Currently I end up copying the page, saving the template as a new template and applying it to the copied page. Then, I can edit the copied template on the copied page and look at the changes through a web browser as I make them. Once I'm done, I either have to rename the original page to something else and then rename the copied page to the original page name (thus replacing the original page basically), or I have to take a gamble and apply the new template to the original page.

I've noticed that when I apply the newly changed template to the original page, a lot of times the content will disappear if I've added/removed web parts, etc.

Does anyone have a good method to "preview" template changes? Is this only possible with the content staging server feature of Kentico? Has anyone found a better method than the copy/paste method I'm currently using?

Thanks!